Transcripts Detail Bid to Contact Pilots

By

Andy Pasztor

Updated Nov. 28, 2009 12:01 a.m. ET

Transcripts released Friday of conversations involving air-traffic controllers and a Northwest Airlines flight that lost radio contact for more than an hour last month reveal a hectic search to locate the jet, but provide scant new clues about what went on in the cockpit.

Flight 188 cruised about 100 miles past its Minneapolis destination on Oct. 21 before the pilots resumed radio transmissions and acknowledged their mistake. The jet ultimately landed safely and nobody was hurt, but the incident has prompted a series of government investigations, sparked a public debate over issues of pilot professionalism and highlighted broader questions about cockpit distractions.

A decision to revoke the licenses of both aviators has embroiled the Federal Aviation Administration in a political and legal tussle with some pilot-union leaders, who are determined to try to help the pilots reverse the move.

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After the crew finally resumed radio contact, their first communication responding to controller messages was: "Ah, roger, ah, we got distracted and we've flown over ah Minneapolis. We are overhead Eau Claire [Wis.] and would like to make a one-eighty..."

The preliminary transcripts released by the FAA provide little detail about what occurred in the cockpit as the plane barreled silently over parts of the Midwest without changing speed or altitude. However, the transcripts do indicate the increasing urgency among air-traffic controllers as they scrambled to re-establish contact with the pilots, including asking nearby jetliners to pass along radio messages.

As the drama played out, the airline's own dispatchers tried unsuccessfully eight times to get a response from the crew by sending silent text messages to cockpit displays, according to investigators. But according to these experts, airline officials never tried to use a special dedicated phone connection onboard that could have sounded an alarm in the cockpit alerting the crew they needed to get back on the radio.

The incident continues to dumbfound many FAA and National Transportation Safety Board officials, who say it's virtually inconceivable for experienced pilots to fly for such a long time and so far past their intended destination without realizing they needed to talk to air-traffic controllers. Over most of the U.S., many veteran airline pilots follow informal safety rules to start checking radio frequencies if they haven't received any transmissions from controllers for 20 or 30 minutes. Approaching an airport, messages and instructions from ground controllers typically stream over the radio at a faster clip.

Soon after radio chatter resumed, a controller said, "I just have to verify that the cockpit is secure." The pilots responded: "It is secure, we got distracted..."

As previously reported, the controllers were concerned about a range of scenarios, including the possibility of terrorists being aboard the plane. During the long silence, air-traffic control managers had contacted the military about scrambling jets to possibly intercept the plane. But no fighters ever took off to intercept Northwest 188, and that is one of the issues under investigation.

The pilots, in interviews with airline-safety managers, law-enforcement officials and federal air-safety investigators, have said they became distracted while looking at their private laptops and discussing company business, including new work schedules. That is the reason they consistently have cited for failing to properly maintain contact with controllers on the ground. Both pilots, veterans with solid work and training records, have appealed the FAA's punishment.

Without confirming or disputing that explanation, the transcripts indicate that during the first portion of radio silence, FAA controllers weren't paying particularly close attention to Flight 188. In the beginning, controllers made only a few radio transmissions to the errant plane, according to the transcripts, and they all appear to be routine requests to change to a new frequency. None of them prompted a response.

As the plane sped closer toward its Minneapolis destination, however, one controller asked a second one about the location of the previous controller who had been tracking the jet, and what steps were being taken to resolve the issue. "I'm not sure," came the response from the first controller, according to the transcripts. "I just sat down." Investigators familiar with the details have said that a change shift for some controllers complicated the search for Flight 188.

It wasn't until controllers realized the plane wasn't slowing down or preparing to land that the air-traffic control chatter about Flight 188's mysterious situation became more frequented and pointed. "We're still not talking to him," the transcripts quote one Minneapolis-area controller saying. "I assuming he's going to hold over Minneapolis."

"You can't reach him at all, that's crazy,' chimed in a fellow controller.

Once normal radio contact was reestablished and instructions issued for the airliner to descend toward the Minneapolis airport, a controller asked the pilots to provide "a brief explanation of what happened." That's when one of the pilots responded by mentioning "cockpit distractions." A controller later asked the pilots, "Is there any way you can elaborate on the distraction?" According to the transcripts, the response from the cockpit was equally vague. "We're just dealing with some company issues here," a pilot is quoted saying. "That's all I can tell you right now,"

Northwest's parent, Delta Air Lines Inc.,DAL0.70% immediately suspended the two from flight duty. Since then, the pilots and their union representatives have argued that the FAA acted hastily in revoking the licenses on an emergency basis before all the facts were gathered and without allowing established voluntary safety-reporting procedures to play out.

Specifically, some supporters of the crew argue that since the pilots already were barred from flying, the FAA overstepped its authority with the emergency license revocation. The legal debate is further complicated by internal politics of the Air Line Pilots Association, with some candidates for union leadership positions seizing on the case to round up votes.

According to some union officials, FAA chief Randy Babbitt has privately told them he revoked the licenses partly because he was getting pressure from officials at the White House and the Department of Transportation to take strong and swift action. Union press officials have declined to comment.

On Friday, a spokeswoman for Mr. Babbitt said the FAA chief based his decision on the "extreme need to refocus on pilot professionalism" and because the crew failed to follow proper procedures. She said the FAA remains convinced the crew's "extremely reckless" behavior warranted license revocation, adding that the pilots aren't "appealing the emergency nature of the revocation."

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